For non-gaming usage, I consider the minimum to be:
1 - Solid state drive of at least 128GB, ideally 250GB
2 - High quality display with a resolution of at least 1920x1080 (1080p)
3 - Decent keyboard
4 - 8GB RAM
These apply to laptops and desktops and mean that whatever you get will be comfortable to use, plus generally if whatever you are buying meets the above requirements, all of the other components like CPU and GPU will be plenty good enough.
Laptops you can pretty much only buy from a store. Building your own PC allows you to know exactly what's gone in it, and build it to the exact specs that you need, but this means that you're on your own for troubleshooting and repairs.
Required software essentially boils down to:
A - The most recent version of your preferred operating system (Windows/OSX) with all the latest updates installed
B - A decent anti-virus+firewall package (I recommend ZoneAlarm)
C - A browser that supports extensions that will improve your security and reduce your chance of downloading anything dodgy - essentially, Chrome or Firefox with the HTTPS Everywhere, uBlock, and Ghostery extensions
What sort of budget do you have? For basic usage I'd expect to pay for about £500-650 to get everything listed above.
Thanks for the response... That's basically the budget I have (approx. £500-£650).
I would like to ask you some questions, however... I'll just throw them out there as they come to mind:
A SSD is absolutely the way to go, right? I've heard it's just better overall for things like heat, no moving parts, faster data access, etc.. As for data storage, I don't really store much on the computer anyway, and I can always just buy an external drive if need be, correct?
The monitor should be like the above resolution, even if it's a laptop? From what I know, 720p (not sure what that is in ?x?) is good enough for the size of laptop screens... I'm missing something, right?
Anything below 8GB RAM is no good?
I'm veering more toward just buying a laptop that's already got everything up and running... the idea of putting stuff together can come years later for me. But, speaking of years later, would it not be better to just keep waiting about 4-5 years and just keep buying new laptops, or whatever, and just getting rid of the old ones as time goes by?
I thought that OSX was an actual computer from Apple. I'm guessing Apple is just like Microsoft here in that they also do operating systems on their own too?
When it comes to Anti-virus software, etc., people always tell me they just get a really good free Anti-virus, like Avast, or whatever... Is there any real point to paying for online security? I've been with Norton for years, but plan to stop and just go free. Some say that Norton is also a resource killer, being super demanding on the system.
When you say browsers, do you just mean software I'm already using, or something that has to be paid for?